Turning off city-states

Tyrael

Tyrael

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I turned off city-states. The game goes much faster now, at least up to turn 160. Quick speed, standard size map with the standard 8 civs, but 0 city-states. The time in between turns is dramatically reduced- I barely feel like I'm waiting at all compared to the same point in my other two games. The time between turns has been under 1 second every time so far, and though I did turn off combat animations (which also helps the pace of the game a lot) there's usually a lot more than 1 second of time spent watching nothing at all happen between turns.

For those of you who hate the long waiting times, try the game without city-states. I think it's likely that you'll have a much better time playing 95% of Civ5 quickly than 100% slooooowly. Personally I don't miss city-states: farm vs trading post is a more legitimate choice now without maritimes, and you have to settle where there's a decent amount of food. I used to think this game was horrible mainly because of the balance issues, but I'm starting to think it's because it just wasn't fun sitting there doing nothing for so long. Now I'm actually enjoying the game despite the flaws because I'm more immersed since I'm actually doing something the majority of the time, instead of doing nothing the majority of the time. Those times when you don't get to build anything for a bunch of turns aren't nearly as bad since each turn doesn't represent a huge investment of time.

Has anyone else tried the game with city-states off and noticed a big difference like I have? Did it make the game more fun for you? Why or why not?
 
I tried it once but on Deity I found I couldn't keep up without constant war. Building stuff was so much harder without CS. There were also way more barbs which was sort of interesting.
 
I've been facing down a ton of barbs as well, which makes sense given that there's no city-states to fogbust anymore. My expansion is slower since I have to use 2 units to escort settlers and keep a lot more units around. The policy that tells you when encampments show up is extremely useful since you can react before barbs show up on your borders, which I'd imagine would happen quite a bit without it.
 
Will reducing the graphic settings help to process the game faster? Maybe that's a better alternative to cancelling CS.
 
I've recently begun playing without city states as well. The game feels more balanced with no city states. I'm in the middle of one game now, but my initial thoughts are:

- You now need to do more to build up your cities. You need to build farms or food buildings and these offer interesting tradeoffs.

- City placement seems to matter now, as you can't just spam trading posts on every tile. Marginal city locations near deserts and tundras, were a drain on the economy.

- Seemed like their were a ton of barbarians, every couple of turns they were appearing on my borders. May need to put more effort in fog busters.

Next I might try with a small number of city states like 3, and see if there is some competition between the big nations for their favor.
 
I'm going to try disabling comabt also!

And then I'll remove the other civs!

This should soon work much better and I'll still get what I paid for.

Thanks!

*rollseyes*
 
I thought some more about this and I haven't reached the late game where the AI covers all the land that city-states would have. When they do the turns might be more on par with normal wait times, but I think the fact that there are 16 less "minds" to process will still make a difference even if it's not as obvious. I'm sure it takes time to switch from one city-state's turn to another since it has to take into account each city-state's personality, determine if they give the player missions, determine if they will declare war, etc.

Niedermayer said:
Will reducing the graphic settings help to process the game faster? Maybe that's a better alternative to cancelling CS.
Click to expand...

I have everything set to minimum detail already. Yes changing the graphics should help, but there's a thread somewhere that says that by far the biggest factor in time between turns was AI workers. The AI workers apparently evaluate every single tile in their borders and in the line of sight of any of their units and then decide what action to take- then the next worker evaluates every single tile, then the next, etc etc. Someone posted asking for a mod that limits workers as a workaround to this problem, which inspired me to come up with the "turn off city-states" workaround. Saving the processing time from 16 less cities with 16 personalities with 1+ workers each is what made a huge difference in my game with the same graphics settings. Like I said though, it's horribly unoptimized AI worker evaluation that causes the wait much more so than graphics. (Wait refers to the time between turns when nothing is happening that you can see, when it's purely the AI processing and evaluating things)

bryanb2007 said:
I've recently begun playing without city states as well. The game feels more balanced with no city states. I'm in the middle of one game now, but my initial thoughts are:

- You now need to do more to build up your cities. You need to build farms or food buildings and these offer interesting tradeoffs.

- City placement seems to matter now, as you can't just spam trading posts on every tile. Marginal city locations near deserts and tundras, were a drain on the economy.

- Seemed like their were a ton of barbarians, every couple of turns they were appearing on my borders. May need to put more effort in fog busters.

Next I might try with a small number of city states like 3, and see if there is some competition between the big nations for their favor.
Click to expand...

I agree with all three points. I take it as a hint that city-states might be detracting from the game in their current state since playing without them creates more interesting decisions ("depth"). I think the low number of city-states is a great idea. Not only do you still reduce that lag greatly, but in theory there will be more civs vying for control of the few city-states which sounds like it would create more interesting decisions.
 
Niedermayer said:
Will reducing the graphic settings help to process the game faster? Maybe that's a better alternative to cancelling CS.
Click to expand...

That only reduces the load time for me, not the AI's turns.

I also turn off city states and plan to levae them off due to how overpowered maritime ones are.
 
vendur said:
That only reduces the load time for me, not the AI's turns.

I also turn off city states and plan to levae them off due to how overpowered maritime ones are.
Click to expand...

Agreed. The food you get from a maritime civ is just plain overpowering, try playing the game without that in play, and see if you like it.
 
And then I'll remove the other civs!
Click to expand...

I removed Greece as it makes the game work far better since they were historically unimportant (I'm not joking, adding some Zulu's in their stead).

Also, I play with the number of city-states equal to players. I find that having so many makes them more convoluted and less valuable than I beleive they should be.
 
Gotta admit, this is a good idea to play without CSs. I'm ussualy allied with only 1 maritime CS and I can live without it, but I'll play without them. The only problem will be too much of empty area, filled with barbs, but I'll earn more on barbs at least, and as Bismarck, it's great. Askia gets tripe gold from encampments and razing cities, so, that's a lot of money. I think that I can play without CSs without a problem(already had that situation with no maritime CS near) and it isn't so hard at all. Plant few farms(or few more) and that's it. Of course, less gold, but more interesting gameplay. It looks like they made CSs only for UN votes, nothing else.
 
I can't wait to try this. Unfortunately, I have to study a lot today:(, maybe in evening.:sad:
 
for the best experience, turn off the game ! Seriously, City states are a integral part of the game.
 
After playing with the normal amount(24 for huge, 20 for large, etc) I turned it down to half and wow that was big improvment as is. Didn't think it was cause of workers though, just AI overthinking everyinth
 
I played without CSs and it's more boring than ussually. Everything is empty and crowded with barbs. I could put more other civs, but that would be too easy and boring. They would DoW on me and I would destroy their army and capture their cities. But, I think I could make interesting things with world builder, maybe even with modding, once when I get enough time to read all of those manuals and stuff. It could be interesting. I whish you could get a generated map without maritime CSs :(.
 
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